Was it best to keep just the front strap on when you were starting out?

Maybe or maybe not.
In first hour I found it helpful to control board and laying a board during restart.
After two hours, once I removed the strap, my first observations were irrelevant.
Probably I could do the same progress trying without a strap.

How many days out before you were up and riding?

It took me 15 mins to manage to stay on a board and riding without constant falling.
After 2 hours I was capable to make 200m long distances riding with the lift effect.
After 5 hours I felt very comfortable riding on a reach and upwind.
After 8-10 hours I was making some of tacks and gybes.
After 15-20 hours I felt comfortable doing full speed downwinds, more than 50% of tacks and gybes.
I consider myself as an experience rider. 10 years kiting.
Last 3 seasons only racing (90%) and strapless wave (10%).

When learning the choice of foil is pretty important if progress is going to be made rapidly. The choice of a large A or delta shape wing is ideal as it is relatively stable and can be ridden at slow speeds.
After riding a delta wing (Carafino) for 7 years I upgraded last year to a high aspect wing shaped foil http://jc-kiteboards.fr/news/category/matos/kite-foil and had to practically re-learn the sport. This new SPOTZ foil needs to be ridden a little faster to get going and is much less stable especially when doing turns. I can't imagine anyone having fun learining with this wing shape.

The main advantages are higher pointing (which was pretty good on the Carafino), superior glide, and huge top end speed. The Carafino could never exceed 15 knots on GPS whereas the SPOTZ can exceed 25 knots and top speed really depends on how brave you are.
I am not into racing so I am now selling this foil (anyone interested?) and will eventually purchase something more user friendly I can use in waves.

My suggest is to start with one front strap, but with a loose trimming.
As you will get use with the 'long' fin, you need to be able to remove the foot from the strap when you want.

Starting strapless need some training.

One last thing is: if you are a beginner, use a foil initally well trimmed in the footstrap location.
The location of the front foot on the board is very important, a bad location can make your learning very hard. If the front foot is too frontward, you'll have difficulty to take off the foil. If the front foot is too forward, you'll have difficulty to control the balance with the foil always wanting to lift you (start of a kind of backroll).

About strapless, this is very interesting ride, I ride only like this and won a racing contest in Dubai last week

Here a small video you should already watched:

And another here with one strap

To finish about the learning, as you can see on the Bracuru video, sometimes you crash the kite, this is totally normal at the beginning, to avoid this, I choose to ride with a little longer lines (32-28m instead of 24m). Like this you have more time to control your kite during the learning of tricks and turns.

Zeeko wrote: I ride only like this and won a racing contest in Dubai last week

That's more than impressive!
How on Mother Earth you ride downwinds?
That was the most difficult thing I faced and still facing.
The speed and angle is crazy and a brain should be switched off.

Does anybody see that foilboarding might be a threat for kiteracing?
It's efficient as the raceboard or even better,
It requires a quiver of max 3 kites which are smaller (12,9,7m) = read - it's much cheaper,
It works in 6kts winds,
It's easy to pack,
It's cheaper to fly around the world,
It allows to ride waves on the same gear if there are wave conditions.

As a competitor for racing with a foilboard in contest where this is allowed (IKA decided foilboard is forbidden on racing contest... ). For real downwind, foilboard is not too bad (my Vmax in contest was the highest in france racing contest with a max speed of 30knots during contest). the best riders with race board in flat conditions is 35-38knts, but in choppy conditions it is less). In 90° angle from wind, raceboards are better.

For upwind, the foil is unbeatable.
For checking race board VS foil, in france we use GPS during race,
on the last 3 contest, I had the best speed (30knots during races), this is not very high, but with the upwind capacity and choppy conditions this is not too bad

For downwind we are at the beginning of the story
And for waves, in fact you don't slash the wave, but ride farer, and ride only the wave ondulation depower totally the kite, this is an awesome sensation!!!

Peter_Frank wrote:What do you mean BraCuru - waveriding WITH the foilboard ?
...do you mean when travelling, you could use a surfboard and put thrusters on instead of the foil so you got all options ?

That is the correct option I meant.

Now I can imagine to have only two kites (12 and 7m), one wing, one wave board to allow riding in winds 5-35kts. All packed in one wave board bag. Together 25kg. Travel around the globe without paying extra charges for oversized baggage.
My fun scale with foils:
5-20kts - foilboarding only,
20-25kts - foil and wave riding - depending conditions
25-35kts - waveriding only.
If a strap is fitted then extra disciplines should be added: big air, old school 3style, cruising, crossings. Is it magic?

I think it's reasonable as foilboarding is a different recognisable kite class by IKA, isn't it?
The races are already overcrowded and imagine you would have another bunch of killers trying to win all
Come to Poland - we allow to compete the foilborders in the Polish Cup events.

Thanks for sharing your findings.
People asked me about it on a Polish forum and I could guess only.
Strapless power downwind - it horryfies me as a newbie. I afraid of falls and being hit by a board or a wing. One ended up with 5 stitches on my lips and slack teeth...

This question is maybe slightly off topic also, but has to so with foils and waveriding:

What is the best way to surf down wind on the wave in light crossshore wind conditions (foil or directional)? Should you try to get the kite low and back into the window (maybe using a kite loop to get it away form the edge)? Should you keep moving the kite back and forth (but this I see more for cut backs, turning back and forth on the wave and not straight line down the face of the wave riding)?

I find that the foil makes getting the kite to sit back nicely quite difficult and am just not seeming to get a nice technique to really enjoy the wave's energy and not either have the kite pulling too much or falling out the sky. Maybe I am just too optimistic and need to settle with the fact that the kite needs to pull a bit in order to stay flying, but I feel there must be a tecnique that is can make you forget the kite and just enjoy the wave's energy on a foil especially in light wind.